Hate You Not

He squints at me after he takes a moment to recover. “Oh shit. Will that hurt the baby?”

“Oh yeah, jizz is a killer.”

He blanches. I laugh.

“You’re wicked, woman.”

“I know.”

We lie down together, wrapped up in each other’s arms. His sweet face is in my hair. My leg is pushed between his.

“This is awfully comfy for a little slice of hell with Mr. Devil.”

“Hey, now. You’re the mom of my hellspawn.”

“That I am.” I snuggle closer.Chapter 31BurkeShe’s asleep in what seems like a few seconds once we lie down in the bed together. I look at her face and throat and breasts and then her belly when she twists and pulls the covers off. She’s fucking perfect. And she’s got our child inside her.

There’s a part of me that wants to stay awake and watch her sleeping, but I’ve been thinking—about the things about me that are the most incompatible with being a good partner to someone. To June Lawler. Getting sleep sometimes is probably important.

As I scoot closer to her, sleeping June wraps her arms around me.

Huggie buggie…

The words bob up from a well buried somewhere near the center of me. I can hear my mother’s voice, can feel her arms around me as she murmurs the silly phrase, just something she used to say when she hugged us at bed time.

I don’t know why, but remembering that makes my eyes fill with tears again. Once the faucet’s going, it’s so fucking hard to stop. I keep hearing all these other things my mom used to say…remembering some things she used to do. Like cutting shapes into our sandwiches with bread stamps and the way her white coat smelled when she would come home from the hospital with it on sometimes. I remember hearing her heartbeat through the stethoscope she always let us play with, and the specific little flower she would always draw when we’d hand her the sidewalk chalk.

The first night my dad ever hit me, she pulled me into the downstairs bathroom and said, “Burke, honey. We’ll get away. It just might take some time.”

I wish it didn’t, but it fucking kills me that we didn’t get away. I know she had to be in so much pain to do what she did. (That makes more tears fall down toward my ears, to think about my mom being so sad and hurt). But…she left us. She left us with him.

Since I’m already crying, and it’s dark and quiet, and June is wrapped around me, I just keep on going. I think of Margot and Oliver, and Asher, Sutton, and it’s all so fucking sad, my chest feels like it’s cracking open.

June stirs then and hugs me closer. I grit my teeth to hold back a groan that wants to come out.

Why does it have to be so bad?

Why does it have to be?

It makes me so mad that my mom’s story ended pushing a note that said “call 9-1-1” under the door, and stepping off a stool in her closet. It makes me so goddamn fucking furious, I start shaking. My dad is a piece of shit, and he’s alive and well—with a new, girlfriend younger than the one before. According to a local magazine, he just bought a small plane to fly down to Malibu on weekends.

I don’t want it. That’s the thesis of my life so far. I don’t want things to be the way they are. When Asher died, I was so furious that for a second, it made me want to do a crazy thing, like crash my car, too. And then I met June, and we rode those horses to her family’s home, and we were sitting on that swing, and she said that bullshit thing about the happily ever afters. And all I wanted—all I wanted in the universe, at that heartbeat in time—was to be able to believe it. Even just a little, just a sliver of belief.

As we rode the horses back to her barn, I realized I couldn’t. And it made me feel so fucking…broken. Which just made me want her more. Like a fucked-up moth to a perfect, warm flame.

And as I lie there, letting my mind wander to the baby June has in her belly, I remember asking someone at the work site for her. The words just float into my head, along with a blurry picture of a plywood room—the room I fell into.

“Call June Lawler. Tell her I need her. I want June.”

It’s too much for one night. Too much to fit into my head. I push my face into the way-too-puffy pillow, and my eye hurts, and my head still aches some. I shift onto my side, and June shifts with me.

“Burke…” She murmurs something near my chest, her words a tickle.

I whisper “mmm,” just so she won’t be lonely in her dream.